Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/251

200 had also lately arrived in the country, being desirous of seeing the mouth of the Columbia, decided to accompany Raymond to Clatsop.

A sad calamity awaited them. The Willamette was running with great force, the winter rains having swollen its flood. On coming to the rapids above the falls the passengers all left the canoe, which was thereupon let down with a rope to a point near the landing, where Mr and Mrs Rogers, Aurelia Leslie, White, and Crocker, with four Indians, again entered it. Raymond and three Indians remained on shore to hold the line while the canoe dropped down to the proper landing. It passed this by a short distance, and was brought alongside a large log, used as a landing. As White touched the shore with one foot he endeavored to hold the canoe with the other, but the slight impetus given it by his first movement, and the force of the current catching the bow, which was up stream, threw the canoe out into the river, which was moving on toward the cateract with resistless power.

It was in vain that those on shore endeavored to cling to the rope. They were drawn into the water, and forced to relinquish their hold to save themselves. Then the freed craft darted like an arrow toward the fatal verge; a cry of anguish went up from the doomed, the plunge was made, and five white persons and two Indians descended into the rocky vortex from which none of them ever issued alive. Only two of the bodies were recovered, those of Rogers and Crocker. Two of the Indians sprang into the water when the danger was first perceived, and gained the shore.

This event occurred February 4, 1843, and threw a gloom over the whole Mission colony. The previous December James Olley, local preacher and carpenter to the Mission, while endeavoring to raft some logs to the mill, to make lumber for finishing his house, had been drowned in the Willamette. The loss of life by